How do you guarantee your own safety and comfort in your own head? The declaration that your head as a protected area, a safe zone requires an inner adult. And this statement of safety is then woven into the fibers of our being and we take it wherever we go. Seems my adult needs to show she has my back for me to trust she’s got it wherever I go.

My inner adult is either trustworthy or she isn’t. And when she isn’t, I feel frightened. I do not know or trust that I will be safe. I can rush off conjuring the future mishaps and take responsibility for feelings haven’t felt yet. And boom, anxiety is born.

I can easily disregard anything I’ve ever done that may give me knowledge of my trustworthiness. Every day, I can feel like the new girl at the new school scrabbling to survive and not be eaten alive. Surviving.

I forget that no one can touch my soul inside of me. Only I can do that. The rejections can only reach the inner sanctum if I deliver them there. The person guarding the door is supposed to be my adult. Apparently sometimes she steps away for a smoke break and leaves my child unattended and frightened that she’ll be asked to drive and she doesn’t know how.

I want all my “parts” to know that they are loved. That I understand why they have decided they aren’t loved or safe or worthy of both and I am making such efforts to convince them otherwise. My inner adult is more than capable of looking my real children in the eye and telling them she’s in charge. I did that tonight in fact. I hope my inner child took heed.

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The sound of my whining children is like a mosquito circling my head. But instead of swatting the bug/child, I realize that they always think that they are never going to get their way, get their needs met, or be able to negotiate for themselves. Just as you have to tell them that all movies are make-believe and any movie I allow them to see will always end well, you have to tell them they are allowed to ask for their needs to be met. They don’t know they’re entitled yet to positively ask for what they need. They don’t know their entitlement to empowerment. I have to stop and say,”If you don’t think you want to do that chore now or you’d prefer juice over milk, how about if you say, ‘Hey Mom , can I do that after dinner? or Mom I’d like juice with my dinner instead of milk, is that OK?’ ” And I have them repeat it back to me in that mental voice.

Somehow I am running a dictatorship that I didn’t realize I was running. And I’d rather have them try to reason for what they want than bully me or whine at me yet they just don’t know that’s allowed. Hard to believe that our liberal egalitarian selves have yet to raise insta-empowered children but there you have it.They need to be taught their entitlement to choices and boundaries.

There are no givens in life and it certainly ain’t fair but there is plenty of reasoning if we allow for it. I’d rather raise a child who would stand up for themselves in a reasonable fashion I could respect then a back-talker who’s resentful all the time. It’s just seems I’m on an upward hill to climb to show them empowerment without whining or sass. But the one guarantee I can make is that I will model this behavior of standing up by not allowing them to be disrespectful to me. Lead by that example as I’d wished I’d learned sooner.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter orPinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

I often say that I wish for every kid (and adults too) to find that one thing that they love themselves while they are doing it. This is how self-esteem is built. That they find a community of people who will join in the mutual appreciation of these efforts and thus build their esteem further. That is some of the good stuff that life has the potential to hand you.

The converse of this scenario is a child who feels worthless and bored. Who can not see themselves in what they do or their surroundings or the faces of their family. And this leads to darker places and choices.

A mother of another three-year-old in our story group expressed her concern that our rural sleepy town didn’t posses enough interesting things for the teens to do. And she felt this boredom was what led to their use of drugs, alcohol, etc. I offered that these were just choices these kids make to squelch a deeper pain. One wrought from the sense of unworthiness from their family situations. I said even rich kids do heroine. She said her husband is a cop, she knows that.

From a person who experimented with illegal substances and took unhealthy risks, had I had any activities at all in my life where I felt valued, where my identity was more than a grade or a boyfriend, other choices would have shown themselves. But I was left to my own devices, to fend and survive and I chose the wrong things to kill my pain with. The wrong people’s opinions to value. Because I didn’t value me. I was invisible to me.

My son found the piano quite early in his life. And he’s gone from an anxiety riddled seven year-old to a confident piano playing 11 year-old. He has no stage fright whatsoever which blows my mind. What he sees in our eyes and the eyes of the world watching him is admiration and support. And he’s confident that he can fulfill their expectations if not surpass them. Wow!

You can do it. You can parent, you can run the marathon, you can start a business, art every day, lose the weight, make your amends, write a book, learn a language, ice skate, or paint. All it takes is the belief that it is what you want and you deserve to show yourself you can do it. You’re worthy of a dream that fulfills you and you deserve the unyielding support that gets you there. That is what I’m giving my kids and I discovered I needed to give this to myself too.

If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

Yesterday was a bad day for my swinging mood. Hormones are sneaky that way and my poor family bared the brunt of my melodramatic outbursts. Fiona, my little, has been acting her age. After she hit/spit/was belligerent to me for the fifth/fiftieth time yesterday, I lost it. I roared up and put her on the timeout step. And then I realized this wasn’t helping anyone, I’d scared her, and I scooped her up and turned the tides as best I could. My expectations for a “good” day had been replaced by bad ones and that was making it worse.

This morning came and I just anticipated it would all be bad again. She was getting on my nerves. No daycare, no storytime, and no sanity I thought. And then I stopped because I know what the quickest way to have a bad day is… to expect it. What you believe will happen will certainly happen because we can’t help but create what we believe. Manifest destiny is a thing.

While we were out yesterday, I’d run into a mother who was in the process of warning her brood that they all needed to mind their behavior while she voted and then she’d get them a toy at the dollar store. But they needed to continue to behave and not bicker while she went shopping. I saw her today and inquired how her day and warnings had gone. She said that they had all done pretty well. She had to cut her shopping plans short when they started to break down after the fourth errand. I wondered if she knew she’d pushed it.

I chant at myself to be aware of my expectations and perspective every week. It’s not fair to randomly raise the expectations bar for you or your loved ones and then blame the failure on yourself or them. Fair is fair. If you know you will create what you decide is inevitable, you can reframe your future envisioning into something a little more positive. If I see abundance and support in my future as opposed to scarcity and isolation I may in fact receive that.

It really truly comes down to what you believe you deserve in your life :

Mostly Happiness or Complete Misery.

You’ll create outcomes to follow through on those decisions. And when you rush off into the future seeing all the disasters sure to unfold, you will guide every bad choice from here until then to make sure you were right. Being right about how your life will suck is such a booby prize, don’t you think?

I’m willing to be wrong and to apologize to my children if it means that they grow up to be compassionate self-aware human beings. That they may forgive and redirect themselves when they falter by remembering the lessons they watched me live. Life can turn on a dime, it just needs a little flick into the air to help it out sometimes.

If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

My go to word in describing parenting is relentless. My baby daughter, ungrateful and miserable, can cry at me at least ten times today, what feels like 70 percent of the day, beating me down further and further into defeat. The relentlessness is daunting.

You’re review is in. Fifty percent of today will not meet with her satisfaction and, according to her, you suck at parenting.

My top seven words to embody my experience with motherhood are:

Chaos

Temperance

Perseverance

Relentless

Confusion

Patience

Exhaustion

All problems could be solved, you think, if only I had their money or their family. Those people with their 5 extra family members to spread out the stress of the 16 plus hours a-grueling-day of care-taking and giving. If only I had their time and money to buy nicer clothing to cover up my ever-widening butt until I could hire that trainer to help me widdle it down. For now, I wear my ill-fitting sweats, placing my greying thinning hair into something up-ish. My nails and cuticles dry and ragged for lack of care. I have that look of survival and neglect. That wild look that says I’ve thought about fleeing in my fantasies. The dull look of disbelief that this will get better no matter how many times people insist it will. Beaten and hopeless is all the rage in the truthful Mommy circles.

If only I had the money to buy a SUV that I could comfortably load and buckle my child into without having the rain soak my back. Then I’d slip into the front seat and drive smoothly away to drop my privileged child off at that member of the care-taking team whose day it was to take them. Or I’d hire a housekeeper/child care-taking person as a stunt double so I could escape and make art or do lunch or have beauty salon time. Where’s my miracle money? My large ever-loving family? Where’s my get out of hardship free card?

No I won’t be looking forward to “taking care of myself” with a kale and flax smoothie tonight. Instead I’m thinking of making pasta with gravy, cheese, and deep-fried potatoes and a side of beef so that I can feel an ounce and moment of comfort that I never feel in my day-to-day existence. Wash it down with a 12oz glass of Shiraz and pray I can stay awake to watch any escapism television.

Why is it wrong to want it to be easier than this? To want the release of the hardship and grinding daily agony. I want to feel light and unencumbered. I want privilege instead of lack. I want a child who doesn’t make me constantly feel like I’m failing her. I want to stand here in the winner’s circle and not the survivor’s circle. Like my mother did. Like hers before her. Because deep down I don’t believe there’s any other way for it to be but hard.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter orPinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

My name is Shalagh Hogan, pronounced Shay-La. I'm the mother of a toddler, a tween, and my five year-old blog and I turned 50 this year. My hope and joy as a writer, an artist, and an uber-creative, is that by sharing my journey of self-discovery, others will gain inspiration and permission for their own journeys.

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